Realengo 18 or the irreducible and brave struggle

On November 11, 1934, the farmers' movement, organized and led by the leader Lino Alvarez, achieved a resounding victory by forcing the government, lawyers and representatives of foreign companies and national oligarchs to suspend the evictions and flagrant injustices, at least temporarily, in the remote place called El Realengo 18, in the deep countryside of the far eastern part of Cuba.

History has proven that it was not a matter of a day to reach this triumph, after several months of hard struggle.

But there was more, the constancy of a long and unyielding trajectory of the sons of that land, described as "another country" by the outstanding intellectual and journalist Pablo de la Torriente Brau, due to the customs of the region, amazing landscape and its early links with the national rebellion.

At that time, Pablo was one of those who put the issue on the public agenda, despite the silencing attempts of the bourgeois press, when he made an anthological report on the demands of the Cuban farmers in situ.
On the premises of El Realengo 18, located in the province of Guantanamo(easternmost region), De la Torriente came face to face with the vertical Lino, an intelligent illiterate and patriotic Mambi, descendant of Africans and member of the troops of the renowned generals Jose Maceo and Calixto Garcia, during the Necessary War (1895).

Today with the condition of National Monument, at that time El Realengo 18 was legally property of the State, and with an approximate extension of 500 caballerias, it was inhabited by very humble families. Most of them were ancestors of independence fighters.

Until the early Republican year of 1905, when this territory, rich in forests, began to be the object of the greed of American and national businessmen, exploiting its precious wood and with plans to replace its splendid vegetation cover with sugar cane plantations that would respond to new private sugar industries.

That was the beginning of the suffering of the poor farmers, as furtive, wealthy and powerful landowners came out of nowhere, backed by a surrendered government, who forced them to evict them, with the support of legal institutions and the already fearsome Rural Guard, which abused the countryside with its abuses.

The "realengueros" did not give up and their struggles pushed back in 1920, the private expropriation with the recovery of state property in the area. But it was only a temporary and fragile respite.

When sadly the Revolution of 1933 had fallen, in the times of President Carlos Mendieta, who replaced the so-called Government of the Hundred Days in power after the overthrow of dictator Gerardo Machado, things got worse again with the appearance of the first sergeant and then careerist colonel named Fulgencio Batista, at the service of foreign interests.

The evictions that had increased under Machado resulted in the strengthening of the struggles of the Realengo. The rural workers organized themselves into groups to defend their main objective, which was the right to the land where they lived and worked, and later on they even founded the Association of Agricultural Producers of El Realengo 18.

Here the experienced Mambi warrior Lino Alvarez comes to the fore, who used up all possible forms of peaceful and juridical claims, before entering fully into the insurgent struggle face to face, as in the times of the clamor. Many saw in him the qualities of leader and conductor they needed, and followed him in a mobilization that gained strength.

His leadership was decisive for the organizations and cells of the cuartones, somewhat spontaneous at first, to spread throughout the area of El Realengo, with effective tactics and strategies. The justice of the cause they defended and their patriotic vocation, which made them feel proud of their Mambisa ancestry, also strengthened them.

Nor did the plans of the private usurpers cease, which, protected this time by a Resolution dictated on March 25, 1932 by the Supreme Court, in July 1934 ceased the Cuban State as owner and administrator of the aforementioned Realengo.

The residents of the already historic site joined their claims to the neighbors of the surrounding areas, mostly squatters, as threatened with expropriation as they were.

A war had become necessary and they were going to wage it with the support of the board of directors, which had become the General Staff, and the creation of several detachments of fifty or sixty men each, who were kept on permanent guard ready to confront the promoters of the evictions.

In August 1934 the first confrontation occurred. The seriousness of the event caused the news of the situation in El Realengo 18 to spread all over the country, as reported by the Diario de la Marina, which lied and manipulated what had happened.

It is said that an enraged Fulgencio Batista said that the demarcation or cutting down of the forests would have to be carried out, whatever the cost or there would be bloodshed. Then the brave residents responded: "Land or blood", which became a slogan.

A military siege was made in the area with too many military personnel ready to machine-gun those fighting for their ancestral and legal rights to the land.

At the same time, there were governmental attempts to bribe or convince Lino to give up his attitude. No proposal gave any guarantees or commitments of justice to the plaintiffs.

While the bourgeoisie and the government threatened or pressured, in other sectors of the country a conscience began to develop in support of the courageous peasant movement.

One of those behaviors was carried out by the Communist Party of Cuba, as the main representative of the working class, which sent several activists, among them, young people offering advice on methods of struggle and the contribution of means of combat.

These farmers from the remote corner of the Earth became a symbol of the rebelliousness of the Cubans, when the moment of the definitive independence was still far away, with the dawn of January 1959.

Their attitude called to account the repressors who thought it opportune to parley that time with the peasantry, perhaps because they felt that they were handling very badly a socio-political crisis that could turn again like a boomerang against them. The strength shown by the peasantry and the people could have given them that message.

The triumph that November 11, their example and legacy of unyielding combat, makes us remember those events with pride, so many years later and when rural life is still full of challenges and challenges to overcome, but in a just and sovereign Cuba.